What we think is the right road
What is happiness? We are happy when we drink champagne, when our favorite team wins the Super Bowl, or we receive a high grade in a challenging class. We are happy when we are rewarded with a big promotion at work, or when we find recognition or fun in various activities. The dictionary says, simply, that happy means "feeling or causing pleasure." We have the right to the pursuit of happiness, just as it says in the Constitution.
But it's the wrong road
Actually, no, it ain't so: It's the Declaration of Independence that discusses the "pursuit of happiness" – and it's wrong. By "wrong," I mean that Thomas Jefferson probably should have mentioned that we must not pursue pleasure by any means or by every means, but let's cut him a little slack because, after all, his chief purpose was not to argue philosophy but to justify revolution.
In teaching philosophy or ethics to college students, I have found that the subject of happiness is a particularly difficult one to raise to abstract standards. Students just plain know when they are happy, and they initially defy the need for any analysis of it.
But upon reflection and interrogation (which is, after all, what philosophy is all about), they begin to admit that there have been occasions when they thought they were happy, but certain results, consequences and after-effects led to a sometimes agonizing re-appraisal.
So: sometimes we think we're happy when, really, we aren't? Would it be helpful if we could predict that what we were going to do would result in genuine, and not counterfeit, happiness?
Counterfeit happiness? That's the giddiness that often results after a few drinks. And the philosopher (or deacon) is obligated to say that the purposeful destruction of reason is (a) never a good thing and (b) always sinful.
But wait, you may object: How did you sneak in a homily here? What does "sin" have to do with all this?
Here, exactly, is fertile and fruitful ground for the Catholic philosopher, who goes on to say something like this: Have you ever thought that happy means blessed?
If you read Matthew, Chapter 5: 1-12, you encounter the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those..." But some sources give the translation not as "blessed" but as "happy." Suppose the philosopher then said: If you want to be happy, strive to be blessed – that is, to be holy.
But you may say that you "know" what it means to be happy, and holiness has nothing whatever to do with it. Until now.
Are you happy when you love your mom and dad? Your brothers and sisters? Or would you put certain bodily pleasures above such love?
Isn't the greatest pleasure the joy we receive from thinking and saying and doing those things we ought to (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1780)? ("Ought" may be the most important word in ethics, for it implies a standard beyond our own appetites and urges. Those are what I want; doing God's will is what I ought to want.)
So, you may object, you're telling me that to be really happy I have to be a "holy roller"?
No, not at all. But I am saying that to be happy we have to conform our ways and wills to God's. St. Paul tells us that in his Letter to the Romans (12:2). When we indulge our appetites despite knowing what we ought to do (from good education and formation), we will not be happy, we will be miserable. Maybe not immediately, but later, for sure. That's not being a "holy roller," it's being reasonable.
Think about this, too, please. I won't ask for your definition of freedom, but let me give you someone else's (actually, Archbishop Fulton Sheen's definition): Freedom is sinlessness. This definition is also in John 8:34. We do what we are, and we are what we continually do. (That's Aristotle.) Do-be-do-be-do. (That's Frank Sinatra.)
When we regularly sin, we condition ourselves to sin; we habituate ourselves to evil. Can evil bring anything except counterfeit happiness?
Shouldn't we try very hard to find the best thoughts, words and deeds – and practice them? Isn't it logical that these lead to real and lasting happiness, and that freedom means doing what we ought to do?
There is a close – a very close – connection among happiness, freedom and holiness. Joy ultimately means knowing, loving and serving God.
A long time ago, Dante told us that "In His will is our peace." Knowing and doing God's will-holiness-happiness-freedom-peace: it's of a piece. St. Thomas Aquinas, as is so often true, put it well: "Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures."
And we can do better than that, can't we? Philosophy tells us we can. We should. We must.
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.